1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a card printing apparatus for printing or marking predetermined items on a card-like medium such as paper or plastic, thereby selling or issuing railroad reserved-seat tickets, plane tickets, and various ID cards.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional example of such an apparatus is a plane reservation ticket vending machine or a toll ticket issuing machine (disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,288,688). Generally, in order to purchase a plane ticket, a customer purchases a reservation ticket at a business office of a plane company or a travel agency and exchanges the reservation ticket for a plane ticket at an airport.
In the above conventional system, a terminal apparatus itself does not directly issue plane tickets. Therefore, in recent years, a system has been developed in which terminal apparatuses are connected to a host apparatus through subscriber telephone lines so that the terminal apparatuses can issue plane tickets while transmitting/receiving data to/from the host apparatus.
However, since such a conventional terminal apparatus, i.e., a reservation ticket vending machine or a toll ticket issuing machine is large in size, installation places are limited.